Ms. Julie Desnoyers: Great. Well, thank you, everyone, for joining us for this late-breaking presentation. My name is Julie Desnoyers. And it's my pleasure today to introduce for the first time the LightCycler® 96 Real-Time PCR system from Roche

So I wanted to start by going back in time and really tell you what's the Roche story here with the qPCR systems. So, it's been more than 14 years that we've been continuously innovating in the field of Real-Time PCR, and today, and to this day, we still challenge our R. and D. scientists to develop accurate and reliable systems that will generate the results that you expect from a LightCycler® system. And the LightCycler® 96 here, really proudly represents that heritage of PCR and brings this ideal combination of accuracy, temperature uniformity, and reproducibility but now enhanced with an interface that is really intuitive for all level of users in the lab.

So, what is the LightCycler® 96? Well, it is very simple. It is innovative, intuitive, and accurate

And really here, the main innovations in the system will allow the system to achieve those unbiased result is and maximize this well-to-well consistency that is very important for qPCR

So what is the main innovation in the system? Well, we are introducing this Novel Optics System that eliminates those well-to-well variations. So, what it consists of, actually, it's two different sets of 96 fiber optics. One set is for providing the excitation light, and the other set is for collecting the emitted light to and from each well. And that system was developed by the Roche scientists to overcome the challenge of having high performance, non-scanning optics in yet a compact design for the instrument.

So what it allows us to do is that it will actually equally excite all the wells at the same time, and it will also simultaneously capture the signals from all the wells.

So what it does is that it avoid any age effect that you would see within the wells or within the plates, and it also eliminates those variations that you would see in the capture signals, those variations that you would see in other systems that would, let's say, have variations due to lag in acquisition time because of scanning optics, or that would also have variability due to multiple different light sources.

So, with this Novel Optics System, where you can expect us to really generate this accurate results because of the optics that will really eliminate those well-to-well variations so you can confidently use all 96 wells in the plate

But what about the interface and what about the ease of use of the overall for the system?

Well, you can expect to speed time to result with this instrument because of the interface because it is intuitive, but yet, powerful, so that all levels of users in the lab can use it

So, let me explain to you what we mean by intuitive

This is an example of the touch-screen interface. So, the instrument comes with a large and very sensitive 10-inch touch screen which is really state-of-the-art. And because it also has a computer in the system, it allows for a complete standalone functionality.

The best test that we thought of was to have first-time, non-experienced qPCR users try it. And what they told us that that they found it very easy to operate and to navigate. And one of the reasons for that is that within only a few clicks, they were able to program their own runs, and that's one of the ways that they can do it is with those five pre-defined temperature protocols, and also because of the icon-driven menus.

And, finally, with this touch screen interface directly on the instrument, what you can do is that you can fully generate, edit, and execute your experiments while also monitoring in real-time their progress.

The other part of the software that is very important is the analysis part. And this is where we have the flexibility to adapt to all the different users that you can have in a lab.

So, for example, let's say you have novice users in the lab, just students that started in your lab, well, the system will facilitate the analysis part of it because it generates those heat map for one view, quick view, of the analysis of the results. And those heat maps can display your choice of either the call, the Cq, the concentration or even endpoint fluorescence.

Then for intermediate users, the software will generate those pre-designed, but still adaptable, bar-chart diagrams. And as you can see, the software will automatically take into account the experimental conditions that you've entered for each of your samples.

And then for those most-experienced users that are probably looking for more advanced features in the software, well, it's good to know that the software will automatically apply center curves, and also efficiency correction, which is crucial for accurate data analysis. As you know, each essay has its own efficiency, and it is really crucial that the software takes that into account when analyzing your data.

And here, what we have is the result table. I know it's very small, and I apologize for that. But trust me when I tell you that the software will actually perform some statistical analysis for you right off the software.

Okay, so all of this is great, but really, what cares is what it will do for your own research.

So, you can trust that the LightCycler® 96 will enable you to generate those publication-ready data that you can trust

And here's an example of its analytical performance:

So, what we did here is an experiment to show you how efficient and how reproducible the LightCycler® 96 is. So this is an experiment where we amplified a fragment of the parvo B19 gene, and it was amplified in 11 serial 1:2 dilutions. And for each dilution, we have four replicates.

And so, what you can see here is a clear separation of the different dilutions, which shows that the system is efficiently capable of discriminating between two-fold differences, which is really key when you are looking at those differences in gene expression experiments where you really want to have a clear resolution.

And what you can also see is that there's really an overlapping of the curves of the replicate for each dilution. So, that shows that this system is very reproducible. The CQ difference is actually less in 0.2 between the four replicates.

So, really to sum it up, the LightCycler® 96 system, you can rely on it that this -- its innovative optics can really allow you to generate those accurate data because of the accurate capture and really maximize this well-to-well consistency. You can also speed time to results with its intuitive, yet powerful interface for both new and experienced users, and, finally, you can rely on the LightCycler® 96 to generate those accurate results that will enable you to get those results really quickly for publication.

Thank you.